I actu­al­ly LOVE our uncom­pro­mis­ing left­ist ide­al­ists. They keep me hon­est, and they keep me focused. I want to do every­thing to give their ide­al­ism expres­sion. They are the ones that call for change, force the mir­ror up to soci­ety, and often spill blood to bring about a world that insti­tu­tion­al and entrenched pow­er will resist. They do not accept incre­men­tal­ism because lib­er­a­tion and equal­i­ty should nev­er have been lost—to say noth­ing of tak­ing decades to acquire. Then, after the nar­ra­tive is changed to one of “Every­thing that hap­pened before THIS was good (and prob­a­bly inevitable), but any MORE change is rad­i­cal and sub­ver­sive and bad,” they give each oth­er a high-five, take a sip of their elec­trolyte drink, and keep right on going work­ing for a bet­ter world.

But one thing some of them can also do is fail to under­stand how things work. I know Russ­ian psi ops attempt­ing to get left­ists to dis­en­fran­chise them­selves and give away their pow­er has some­thing to do with this. And cap­i­tal­ism does too because out­rage sells, so fram­ing things with­out nuance is big busi­ness. Still, they don’t seem to under­stand some­one can actu­al­ly do with cer­tain levers of pow­er. No one from an orga­nized left­ist posi­tion (with very few excep­tions) doesn’t think the same thing: “Vote. It’s not going to get us what we want, but it might make get­ting what we want a lit­tle eas­i­er, and it’ll def­i­nite­ly be a LOT hard­er if con­ser­v­a­tives decide who will gov­ern us.”

That lever of power—voting—doesn’t go any fur­ther. You have to use oth­ers as well.

The Democ­rats are not the solu­tion to many left­ist prob­lems. Dems, for exam­ple, are not going to end cap­i­tal­ism, stop being col­o­niz­ers, defund the police or mil­i­tary, or take far left­ist posi­tions against cor­po­rate neoim­pe­ri­al­ism. And attack­ing them as if that could ever hap­pen (with­out a lot more entrenched pow­er) is a waste of time and ener­gy that could be bet­ter spent push­ing a lever of pow­er that might actu­al­ly work. Bad­ger­ing any­one with the prag­ma­tism to fol­low and be con­cerned with elec­toral pol­i­tics as a hope­less bootlick­er is a good way to put your­self on the out­side of any mean­ing­ful pow­er to cre­ate change. And expect­ing that con­stant­ly attack­ing Democ­rats (and those who sup­port them) would be use­ful is basi­cal­ly the oth­er side of the coin of think­ing that sup­port­ing them is ALL you have to do and the “arc of his­to­ry” (or some­thing) will take care of the rest. They just can’t get you any fur­ther.

Democ­rats work for con­stituents who are plu­ralistic, MANY of whom still labor under the assump­tions of white male suprema­cy (even if they aren’t avowed white suprema­cists them­selves). Politi­cians have to start fundrais­ing $50,000 a week from the moment they’re sworn in to have a chance of win­ning in even a non-com­pet­i­tive dis­trict. (Way more than that if they get a seri­ous chal­lenge.) And in most parts of the coun­try, if they stick their necks too far out on left­ist caus­es, they get FIRED. Because the war for hearts and minds has not been won on SO many issues—a dif­fi­cult fact that is on us to rec­og­nize and deal with rather than get pissed off about—and because the sim­ple math­e­mat­i­cal fact that a vote lost to the right becomes two votes that need to be recov­ered (one for the lost vote and one for the vote Repub­li­cans just picked up), Democ­rats under threat will ALWAYS run to the right.

Always.

You can’t gov­ern if you don’t win.

And so, the only way to build left­ism through elec­toral pol­i­tics is to strength­en them, accept incre­men­tal­ism, and win over mil­lions in a world increas­ing­ly framed by bil­lion­aires with the oppo­site agen­da. That lever doesn’t go any fur­ther. That’s why we need activists and ide­al­ists.

Left­ists also have a bad habit of los­ing the for­est for the clichés. Yes, Democ­rats, by and large, sup­port geno­cide (because of the things that elec­toral pol­i­tics is not the right lever of pow­er to fix). How­ev­er, say­ing there’s “no dif­fer­ence” between a posi­tion that takes away health care, abor­tion access, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions, social safe­ty nets, legal pro­tec­tions around diver­si­ty, as well as a posi­tion that shields pedophile rapists and goes absolute­ly trans­par­ent­ly all in on naked white male suprema­cy, and a posi­tion that bombs sev­en coun­tries in the first year—AND that also sup­ports geno­cide… Well, call­ing them the “same,” and blam­ing the rise of fas­cism on any­one with the prag­ma­tism to see the dif­fer­ence in their every­day lives is the oppo­site of effec­tive.

Lump­ing all Democ­rats togeth­er because they have a D after their name ignores the wide vari­ety of posi­tions WITHIN the par­ty. Eliz­a­beth War­ren is not in the same league as a DINO in a pur­ple dis­trict nego­ti­at­ing their vote on a bill that absolute­ly WILL pass any­way for a few things that could help their peo­ple and their mod­er­ate cred. Shout­ing “Dems did this” when maybe it was actu­al­ly only a half a dozen con­gressper­sons (with polling data that they’re too lib­er­al and are going to lose reelec­tion by eight points) who broke ranks is not only breath­tak­ing­ly sophistical, but betrays a lack of under­stand­ing about the non-triv­ial polit­i­cal forces arrayed against the caus­es left­ists love.

Lov­ing any­one who hates Amer­i­ca is a bad look when that love is aimed at a regime soaked in blood. The his­to­ry of vio­lent left­ist rev­o­lu­tions typ­i­cal­ly does not go well for the left­ists. Want­i­ng a charis­mat­ic leader to ignore the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, ignore Con­gress, ignore the Supreme Court, and ignore huge swaths of the coun­try to jam through some left­ist utopia is JUST as author­i­tar­i­an and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic as Trump is being and does­n’t stop being prob­lem­at­ic and total­i­tar­i­an because we like where things are going. Being unable to crit­i­cize a gov­ern­ment with­out invok­ing RANK anti-Semi­tism is hypocrisy at its most pro­nounced.

And WHITE left­ists real­ly need to be care­ful about ignor­ing any­thing that isn’t class war. Class war is very impor­tant, and the whole polit­i­cal land­scape would be bet­ter if we had some aggres­sive lev­el­ing mech­a­nisms that kept bil­lion­aires from rig­ging elec­tions, social­ly engi­neer­ing what we think, and amass­ing ever more wealth and pow­er, but it is not lib­er­a­tion or egal­i­tar­i­an­ism to pre­tend all prob­lems with big­otry would sim­ply go away. This is just an abject fail­ure in inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty. It’s reduc­tive beyond ratio­nal­i­ty. Good old fash­ioned “I don’t like those peo­ple” big­otry is absolute­ly alive and doing QUITE well in the Unit­ed States, and ignor­ing GENERATIONS of atroc­i­ties to pre­tend that it isn’t part of the con­ver­sa­tion or that it would just all be bet­ter if US for­eign pol­i­cy were to change and if the apos­tle Bernie Sanders were pres­i­dent puts white left­ists in a posi­tion where they’re often speak­ing down to BIPOC about their own inter­ests and con­tin­u­ing the cycle of white male supremacy—just with left­ist fla­vor­ing.

There’s a rea­son white men get away with talk­ing casu­al­ly about vio­lence against the state and every oth­er group faces extreme and imme­di­ate back­lash.

Ide­al­ists are spec­tac­u­lar, and mak­ing a bet­ter world takes a lot more than just politi­cians. We absolute­ly need peo­ple who will hold our feet to the fire after some blue wave (or some­thing) and who will remind us that the work is nev­er end­ing. We need peo­ple who will remind us of what is still left to fight for when half the activists want to quit the field as soon as things are back to “nor­mal.” We need peo­ple who will point out that the left wing of US pol­i­tics is slight­ly to the right of a glob­al cen­ter and more inter­est­ed in per­pet­u­at­ing its own pow­er than the con­cerns of the mar­gin­al­ized.

Refus­ing to com­pro­mise is admirable and impor­tant in this work. But it is nev­er, by itself, a path to the pow­er to effect change. That takes a lot of dif­fer­ent mov­ing parts and includes the insti­tu­tions that gov­ern.

We can’t gov­ern if we don’t win.